Australia’s Matthews Secures Sensational Stage 14 Tour de France Win
The Tour de France produced an epic finale to one of its toughest stages as Australian cyclist Michael Matthew won a hard felt climb to claim his first stage win. The stage is one of the most grueling throughout the three-week cycling tour, very hilly with a lot of narrow descents making things all that bit more harder for the peloton to navigate. The 31-year-old gave an emotional speech at the line and showered praise on his team, his family, and his supporters for helping him hold the pace required for victory going up the final climb of the 192.5km route.
The Australian, Michael Matthews was able to claim a sensational stage 14 win in the Tour de France as he battled off intense rivalry from deep within the peloton to claim his first stage win. ©HilmarBuschow/Pixabay
It looked as if Matthews wasn’t going to be able to hold it all together approaching the final ascent of the day. With less than 4km to go until the line, Matthews and Bettiol were locked in a battle going up a crowder Cote de la Croix. Matthews a rider more renowned for his ability to sprint close stages on the flat showed his phenomenal versatility in the climbing, and most impressive of all was able to claw his way back into first position after losing touch with the Italian by nearly 10 meters at one section of the climb.
The stage was the stuff of Tour de France classics, cyclists hit the final climb of an approximate 11% going for 3km straight up with around 5km left to go in the stage. Crowds of many thousands of spectators lined the route to the top of the hill, with the last section of 500 m complete pandemonium, adding to the magic that is the Tour de France and displaying just how popular the event remains across France in these modern times.
Elsewhere on the mountain, the general classification battle was raging on, and Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark was able to repel the desperate attacks of Slovenian defending Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar. The first attempt launched by Pogacar to catch the Dane came right at the beginning of the stage, causing chaos within the peloton, with the second attempt coming at the very end as the teams lined up to take on Cote de la Croix.
Who to Watch out for in Edition 109 of the Tour de France
This year’s event started in Copenhagen Denmark on the July 1st and will finish on the Champs-Elysees on the July 24th. It’s been a highly international affair this year, with the route directors taking the peloton through four countries: Denmark, France, Belgium and Switzerland. In total the peloton will cover 3,353km and climb many hundreds of kilometers of grueling up-hill terrain as they battle to win one of the highly lucrative four colored classification jerseys up for grabs.
Those of course are the Green jersey for the highest scoring sprinter, the Polkadot jersey for the highest scoring climber, the White jersey for the highest scoring young rider, and the Yellow jersey for the overall fastest rider, also known as the general classification award.
Elsewhere in the mix is several interesting contenders for the general classification jersey awarded to the best rider overall. Obvious as a first mention beside the current holder of the yellow jersey Jonas Vingegaard is last year’s winner of both the Yellow and White jerseys, Tadej Pogacar. With 2 mins and 22 seconds the gap between 1st and 2nd place, it will be a tough closing 5 stages fought for the top spot. Britain’s Geraint Thomas sits in 3rd, just 2 mins 43 seconds from 1st place. In fact, in the top 8 cyclists in the general classification award category, there is just 4 mins and 24 seconds separating them from 1st place. This means to expect a highly competitive last week in the tour.
In terms of cycling glory, the pinnacle doesn’t get much higher than the Tour de France. The annual three-to-four week long event traverses the entire territory of France, transcending some of Europe’s most beautiful rural land, mountains and valleys. Running for over a century, the epic event has paved the way for road cycling to become one of the world’s most popular sport, with participation numbers in the millions and a whole range of industry’s completely dependent on the servicing of its practitioners.
